Uzbekistan state university of world languages english language faculty №2

2.2. Assimilating American Indians in James Fenimore Cooper’s Novels
James Fenimore Cooper’s Native Americans are generally considered the Vanishing Indians; they must either die, or go and vanish. They vanish because they are, allegedly, unable or unwilling to assimilate, or if they appear somewhat assimilated, they fall victim to the white man’s vice, alcoholism. Actually, there are some American Indian characters who undergo some kind of cultural adaptation, if not an assimilation, in Cooper’s novels. Such characters can be found in his late novels from the 1840s, in Wyandotté (1843), the Oak Openings (1848) and in the trilogy e Littlepage Manuscripts (1845-46). e American Indian characters who assume a more prominent role in the narrative display a very special mode of acculturation. Rather than assimilation it can be regarded as a form of survivance (Gerald Vizenor’s concept) but since the concept of survivance is bound to the more contemporary context of Native American literature, and we deal with literary works written by a white man, I suggest we call this kind of acculturation critical integration. First, we need to clarify the relation between two related terms: assimilation and acculturation. According to Milton Gordon, still considered one of the major authorities on this topic, the term acculturation tends to be used by anthropologists, and assimilation by sociologists. In his famous table of assimilation variables the concept acculturation designates cultural assimilation, defines as a “change of cultural patterns to those of the host society”. This kind of cultural adaptation is what is relevant for our purposes because the other forms of assimilation listed in the table (structural assimilation3, marital assimilation, identifi cational, attitude receptional, behavior receptional and civic assimilation) do not feature in Cooper’s novels. Cooper’s American Indians never take up jobs and are never offered offices in the American administration, with one (tragic) exception do not intermarry, do not join any social clubs, never settle down in a city; they may serve as scouts, guides, hunters, or temporary military allies, but that is the highest degree of acculturation they are allowed in Cooper’s fiction. Thus both social and structural assimilation has to be excluded from our study, and only the field of cultural assimilation (acculturation) remains for our examination. We need, however, a more detailed classification of acculturation (cultural assimilation). I believe John Berry’s theory of acculturation can serve as a useful point of departure. Acculturation, in John Berry’s four-fold model, comprises assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization. He defines it as follows:
Acculturation is the dual process of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contact between two or more cultural groups and their individual members. At the group level, it involves changes in social structures and institutions and in cultural practices. At the individual level, it involves changes in a person’s behavioral repertoire.
Assimilation occurs when individuals adopt the cultural norms of a dominant or host culture in preference to their original culture (this corresponds to Gordon’s cultural assimilation). According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, assimilation is “the most extreme form of acculturation”:
Assimilation, in anthropology and sociology, the process whereby individuals or groups of differing ethnic heritage are absorbed into the dominant culture of a society. The process of assimilating involves taking on the traits of the dominant culture to such a degree that the assimilating group becomes socially indistinguishable from other members of the society.
Separation comes about when individuals reject the dominant or host culture in favor of preserving their culture of origin. Separation is often facilitated by immigration to ethnic enclaves. Integration takes place when individuals are able to adopt the cultural norms of the dominant or host culture while maintaining their culture of origin. Integration leads to, and is often synonymous with, biculturalism. Marginalization occurs when individuals reject both their culture of origin and the dominant host culture. Berry’s four-fold classification of acculturation will provide a useful conceptual framework for this study, although its application has some limits because it is primarily concerned with immigrants in a host country. As Robert Blauner points out, the context in which Native Americans’ cultural adaptation should be examined is that of colonialism , or as Berry has more recently suggested, in the context of neo-colonialism. Native Americans are not immigrants, but indigenous people, who were conquered, colonized, and subjugated. According to Blauner, colonization is a diff erent process from immigration and the social realities of the colonized Native Americans “cannot be understood in the framework of immigration and assimilation that is applied to European ethnic groups” and such indigenous people are more likely to display resistance especially to assimilation. The Native American experience of being colonized on their own territory also sets them apart from African Americans, who were enslaved and dislocated from their original cultural environment. At the time at which Cooper’s novels were published, the Native Americans could still, to some degree, resist or avoid assimilation because many of them lived in autonomous territories and were exposed to the colonists’ cultures only at the points and zones of contact, be it the frontier or the trading stations on their territory, or indirectly, through visitors and traders and government agents. In the past, the process of acculturation was studied as a one-way impact of the dominant culture on the indigenous peoples and then of the receiving culture on the immigrants, now the emphasis is laid on dual, or even multiple, interactions of cultures in culturally pluralistic societies. Acculturation is a very complex process and it does not involve a mere transfer of skills, technology, and values from the colonists to the indigenous people. The colonists’ cultural norms, values, and practices are never simply reproduced. As Naylor puts it, “members of the focal groups are not passive participants in the interaction required for change, but active respondents to what they are being asked to accept […]”.
The representation of the North American Indian in 19th-century American literature is supposed to have a weakened referential link and is believed to be the product of the discourse of savagism rather than a reflection of the reality. As Roy Harvey Pearce explains in his seminal study Savagism and Civilization (1953), savagism is a way of thinking about the Native Americans as the cultural other, the opposite to the idea of civilization. “Savage life and civilized life are realms apart”. The savage state was believed to be an earlier, more primitive stage of civilization but the gap between the Native Americans and Euro-Americans seemed too wide, their cultures too different. The Native Americans, as Scott R. Lyons puts it, “were described as tragic figures incapable of civilization and destined to vanish”, because their cultural practices, their religious principles, and their concept of economy were fundamentally incompatible with the Euro-American way and American identity.
The assimilating Indians were portrayed as the dregs of society, living at the geographical edge of American civilization, as dirty degenerate beggars, drunkards, or basket or broom makers, as Cooper’s first American Indian character, Chingachgook in the Pioneers (1823), demonstrates. The true Native Americans were said to be wild, untamed savages and those either died in wars or went west to become the Vanishing Indians because even their days were numbered. James Fenimore Cooper wrote 12 novels with American Indian characters; in some of these novels they make only episodic appearances. A more careful examination of other American Indian characters will reveal that although most of those characters may be classified as Vanishing Indians, some of them are not assimilated and develop a mode of survival at the cultural interstices, for which we need a more accurate concept than assimilation, adaptation, or acculturation. Cooper’s fi rst American Indian character, Chingachgook, started his literary life in the Pioneers (1823), the fi rst book in the Leatherstocking Tales. Chingachgook had come to the frontier settlement of Templeton approximately two years before the start of the novel, and came to live with his old friend and battle companion Natty Bumppo in his log cabin above the lake. At first glance he appears to be an assimilated Indian. He buried the hatchet a long time ago, he is a Christian, baptized by the missionaries of the Moravian Church, he attends Mass in the local church, he earns his living by making baskets, and he goes to the local inn and gets drunk.
Using Berry’s scale of acculturation, he might be in the state of integration because he has adapted to village life and at the same time he maintains some Native American cultural practices: he still dresses according to the Native American fashion, he may have buried the hatchet – but strangely enough, he still carries his hatchet in his belt not merely to the forest, but also to the inn and even to church, no matter how uncomfortable it must be. On top of that, at the end of the novel he goes Native again, leaving behind the thin layer of acculturation, returning to his old faith and religious practices; he dies chanting his death song, decorated with a warrior’s insignia and, to the exasperation of a minister of the Anglican Church, he says he is departing for the eternal hunting grounds instead of the expected white man’s heaven. According to Berry’s classification system he finally chooses separation, that is, a rejection of the dominant or host culture in favor of his culture of origin. His departure for the eternal hunting grounds comes very close to another feature of separation in Berry’s theory – immigration to ethnic enclaves. His heaven is in fact a segregated ethnic enclave; there are no white men there, only the “just and brave Indians”, as he explains in his dying words to his old companion Natty Bumppo. Because of this ending, the Chingachgook of the Pioneers encourages the reader to think that Cooper’s American Indians are the Noble Savages, the Vanishing Indians, incapable of assimilation or integration, whose choice is cultural separation. On the other hand, for the greater part of the novel, Chingachgook was living in contact with the white man’s culture, neither assimilated nor separated from it. He had accepted Christianity but remained an Indian in his mind, conduct, and manners. And for such a form of acculturation based on a symbiotic relationship we need a more accurate term than integration. I propose we start from Gerald Vizenor’s term survivance. Survivance covers a more hybrid concept of identity which allows for a dynamic process where different codes may coexist or clash among themselves, or temporarily succeed one another. For Gerald Vizenor, this concept denotes active survival, endurance, and resistance as opposed to victimization and defeat or survival in the ruins of tribal culture. In Vizenor’s words, survivance comprises “natural reason, remembrance, traditions and customs the native humanistic tease, vital irony, spirit, cast of mind, and moral courage. The character of survivance creates a sense of native presence over absence, nihility, and victimry”. This is notion of “active sense of presence” is of crucial importance. If we seek such American Indian characters in Cooper’s fiction, we have to skip those in the Last of the Mohicans because both Uncas and Magua, though they display some level of cultural assimilation, are conceived as Vanishing Indians. A type closer to the notion of survivance is the young Pawnee chief Hard Heart, a variant on Uncas, another Noble Savage, in the Prairie (1827). He at least survives and his tribe still lives on its own territory. Another variation on Uncas and star-crossed love is Conan Chet from e Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish (1829), set in King Philip’s War (the First Indian War) in the 17th century8. All these characters keep their own cultural identity and do not assimilate, and their behavior can be classified, using Berry’s concept, as separation. their rejection of the colonizer’s culture often does not extend to individuals, and thus they can become, for a time, friends, faithful allies, and protectors of some white people. Their goodness, however, or their mercy, does not result from their exposure to the white man’s culture, or from acceptance of the white man’s ethical and cultural values and norms, but from their own sense of duty, value, and virtue. So far the evidence has gone against any prospect of successful assimilation or integration. Even when such a possibility is opened up, as in the case of Uncas, the resolution of the novel closes it down. But Cooper was always experimenting with new varieties and choices – in the 1840s he wrote, apart from two more volumes of the Leatherstocking Tales, The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841), several novels with new types of American Indian characters, through which he probes further possibilities of acculturation – Wyandotté (1843) and The Oak Openings (1848). American Indian characters also appear in the trilogy called The Littlepage Manuscripts and in an episode from the West Coast in Afloat and Ashore (1844). I will focus on the Littlepage trilogy because it allows us to view a new direction in the conception of the American Indian character. The Littlepage Manuscripts consist of three novels, Satanstoe (1845)9, The Chainbearer (1845), and The Redskins (1846). The family saga maps the rising fortunes of the New York gentry, a gentleman class of small landowners, from the 1750s to the 1840s in The Redskins and dramatizes the problems associated with establishing settlements in the West and maintaining order and prosperity.